hvt@tnocsda.UUCP (Henk van Tijen) (04/03/86)
MacPlot Experience:
version: 1.8 august 1985
Plot has some nice features, but is implemented with some faults.
It's a seperate program that analyzes the (quickdraw) contents of the
Clipboard and then translates it to plotter-commands.
The contents of the clipboard must come from MacDraw. If you want to plot
from MacDraft, you have to paste it in MacDraw first. (Otherwise rotated
rectangles really result in garbage).
The user interface is (sigh...) not completely "Macish":
-for a lot of dialog boxes there's only a "Quit" (that works as a "OK")
and no "Cancel". Or even no "Quit" but your selection performs at the
same time the "OK"-function.
-Radio buttons and check boxes are used wrongly.
-You have to select your plotter from a menu called "Plotter". Because
there are so many plotters, they have added a second menu, called...
"Plotter".
Features:
- You can create a hatch-style for each fill area pattern. Distance,
angle, cross hatch on/off, and pen number can be selected.
- The drawing can be scaled up and down by some fixed factors (1:1.5, 1:2,
1:5 etc)
- Drawing can be rotated by 90 degrees.
- The drawing can be repositioned (by dragging mini-drawing in a
window).
- Each quick draw line can be assigned a plotter pen (or 'not drawn')
and a optional dash-distance
- Text can be drawn by plotter built-in fonts or the Mac fonts can be
drawn with dots.
Major complaints:
- Sometimes the plotting stops halfway, leaving you with a incomplete drawing.
(Maybe it's my fault but I really tried everything).
- Sometimes the plotter seems to not get a pen-up command, typically
resulting in a diagonal line across the paper.
- (*BAD*:) Text can not be assigned pens to. So the plotter draws the text
with the pen it currently happens to have in it's holder. I.e. if you are
plotting with colored hatches, SOME of the text will probably be colored
too.
- Because all the plotterdrivers are contained in the code it's not
possible to add a custom plotterdriver. It makes the program's file
big (70+ K) too.
For proffessional work MacPlot is certainly not adequate, unless you
only need a one-pen plot of not to comlicated drawings. Maybe there's a
improved version out, but my dealer latest is still 1.8.
I think seperate plotter programs is not the way to go. The solution as
with the Laserwriter is better, as it can be used from any decent program. (Or
is there a technical problem here ?)
Please comment to me directly by e-mail, I will post a resumee to the net.
- Henq
USENET: mcvax!tnoscda!hvt
All normal disclaimers apply. And:
Everybody is entitled to my opinion